Photon recoil momentum in a Bose–Einstein condensate of a dilute gas

Abstract We develop a ‘minimal’ microscopic model to describe a two-pulse-Ramsey-interferometer-based scheme of measurement of the photon recoil momentum in a Bose–Einstein condensate of a dilute gas (Campbell et al 2005 Phys. Rev. Lett. 94 170403 ). We exploit the truncated coupled Maxwell–Schrödinger equations to elaborate the problem. Our approach provides a theoretical tool to reproduce essential features of the experimental results. Additionally, we calculate the quantum-mechanical mean value of the recoil momentum and its statistical distribution that provides a detailed information about the recoil event.